$300-$500 Treadmills

The Merit Fitness 725T Plus Treadmill is an affordable high end treadmill that is a great starter for a home gym. It has decent power allowing you to get to easily get some good speeds going and comes with some good features such as it’s air cushioned support that will protect your joints.

Product Features

Home treadmill with top-quality 2.25-horsepower drive motor

Intuitive console controls with adjustable speed from 0 to 10 miles per hour

2-window LED display tracks your time, speed, distance, calories, and more

Warranties: Lifetime on the frame, 2 years on the motor, 90 days on parts and labor

Merit Fitness 725T Plus Treadmill Review

I bought the Merit Fitness 725T Plus Treadmill knowing it wasn’t a top end model and so expected a bit of hassle putting it together – but it was actually fairly simple and took about 45 minutes – screw this, then that then done.

It is a fold up tread mill so it won’t take up too much room when not being used. This isn’t really a problem for me so I always have it down, but it should be pretty handy for a lot of people just looking to have a running machine in a spare bedroom or in front of the tv.

It is aimed at beginners and comes with a variety of pre-set exercise regimes such as weight loss (max cardio) mountain walking, hill etc. If you are a beginner these should really get you quite fit no matter where you are starting – there is something for everyone. It can get to a good pace and changes between speed fast and smooth as well as having auto incline and decline.

It comes with a dual LED screen that allows you to keep an eye of any two of the following at a time Time/Incline/Pulse on one screen, Distance/Speed/Calories on the other. This makes it very convenient to swap between whatever you want to look at and keep an eye on what ever is important to you.

Apart from the pre set runs this is actually a fairly basic tread mill. No integration with Iphone apps, only led monitors, no google maps to make your runs a little more realistic and fun. But for the price, this is a pretty good deal.

Despite what their website says it is not the quietest machine out there. In fact you will have to turn up the T.V pretty loud if you want to enjoy a program. Part of this is down to your feet smacking the treadmill every second and there being poor sound absorption by the floor (although it is not so hard it hurts).

It has a great safety feature that is not uncommon these days (especially in slightly cheaper models for some reasons) where you clip a piece of string on to you, and on the other end it magnetically attaches to a power button. If you fall off it the string will rip off the magnet from the power button and stop the treadmill dead. It’s is a great safety feature, but I found it kept getting in the way of my ear phone that I dangle down, so I rarely use it (I advise you do use it!). It has an on board heart rate monitor on the two handles – you grip down and it tells you your heart rate. I have my suspicions that mine was not always right, but it is still a nice feature to have.

Conclusion

For the money it is a good treadmill, but it does have its limitations. If you are a reasonably priced, solid treadmill without lots of extra features then this is perfect for you. If you are looking for something a little more advanced perhaps consider the profrom power 995